Not withstanding personal attacks, the answer to your question has to do with the recent reorganization following the acquisition of Nokia and the closure of several areas such as Xbox TV. Approximately 12,000 employees are said to be release from the Nokia side while 6,000 are from the Microsoft side.

Funny thing is, we should have seen this coming. Since when have one of these mergers/acquisitions not resulted in mass layoffs.

Well, to reduce costs DUH.... 18.000 fired people X "insert salary here" per month= "X" amount of money per year, put a few years here and there to fill the loss of money in a department. You don't understand nothing from my comment, do you? :)

Microsoft has grown too big for its own good, and it has to cut off some fat to be more agile as a corporation. Microsoft is competing in multiple quickly evolving markets, and it needs to be able to respond and adapt at a fast rate. Just because you have billions, doesn't mean you can afford to keep unneeded assets.

It obviously sucks for all those affected, but for Microsoft itself, it's a very healthy thing to do. Most major corporations go through these purges at some point.

You also have to factor in the change of CEO; Ballmer has worked hard over the years to make Microsoft a hardware and services company, the new CEO might not have the same vision for Microsoft's future. The Surface line seems to be safe for now, and so is the Xbox division, but we might never see a Microsoft Lumia after all.

I agree I think Microsoft were always laying off a log of Nokia staff from the start as they have there own hardware team inplace and there was always going to be over lapping jobs.

People seem to forget that 14 thousand of the 18 thousand jobs were from Nokia its only another 4 thousand that was in house that is going.

Microsoft have a new CEO too that is coming up to 6 months in charge and he was always going to make changes and look where the last CEO went wrong and one thing was the messages that were let out to the public about Windows, Surface xbox ect.

I think this new move as well as Microsoft buying Nokia going forward will see Microsoft start to grow again.